Schools, teams will score funds from green energy

Published 6:16 pm, Tuesday, July 27, 2010

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Two new companies, Texas Longhorns Energy and Texas A&M Aggie Energy, will make contributions to the universities they?re named for and their athletics programs for each customer who buys renewable energy.

Two new companies, Texas Longhorns Energy and Texas A&M Aggie Energy, will make contributions to the universities they?re named for and their athletics programs for each customer who buys renewable energy.

Schools, teams will score funds from green energy

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Longhorn power versus Aggie power. Soon it will mean more than bruising football teams.

Within weeks, fans of the University of Texas and Texas A&M will be able to buy renewable energy to power their homes or businesses and contribute to their favorite university at the same time when they purchase electricity from one of two new companies: Texas Longhorns Energy or Texas A&M Aggie Energy.

For each customer who joins, the companies will make contributions to the universities they're named for and their athletics programs. And customers will be able to get discounts on merchandise, events and tickets to some games, said Jason Helms, CEO of Dallas-based Branded Retail Energy Co., who put the deals together.

Helms said he believes his venture is a first. It's not just for graduates of the University of Texas at Austin or Texas A&M, he said, but for all their fans.

“They'll be able to support their university and do something for the environment as well,” he said.

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Longhorns Energy will be launched in mid-August and Aggie Energy on Sept. 3.

For now, customers of CPS Energy in San Antonio cannot participate because they aren't part of the deregulated electricity market, in which retail power is sold by competing providers.

But Helms believes that the market for the new companies is potentially vast because utility customers in cities including Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Corpus Christi will able to participate, as will customers in the Rio Grande Valley and much of West Texas.

Charlene Davis, associate professor of marketing at Trinity University's business administration department, said the new ventures are “a really interesting intersection of affinity marketing and cause marketing.”

“We don't expect this on energy,” she said. “You can get a coffin with your favorite team's logo on it, but your energy? This is terribly exciting from a marketing standpoint.”

Houston-based Champion Energy Services will provide the power to both ventures. What kind of renewable energy will be used has yet to be decided. But Champion CEO Scott Fordham said customers can rest assured that they're getting 100 percent renewable energy from his company because the Texas Public Utility Commission requires it to verify the power sources.

Helms and Fordham said the renewable power sold by Longhorns Energy and Aggie Energy will be priced competitively with other sellers of renewable energy.

Longhorns Energy is a venture of Helms' Branded Retail Energy, which will market the electricity in cooperation with IMG College, a multimedia and sponsorship sales partner for UT athletics.

Aggie Energy also is a venture of Branded Retail Energy, with Learfield Sports, which holds A&M's multimedia rights, and Collegiate Licensing Co., the exclusive licensing agency for Texas A&M.

Helms said marketing done through Branded Retail Energy partners will generate cost savings. Money that would typically be spent on traditional marketing will instead generate funding back to the universities and their athletic programs.

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“This truly is a revolutionary approach to energy marketing,” said UT men's athletics director DeLoss Dodds, adding that the university will get funding for each customer who joins Longhorns Energy.

Shane Hinckley, Texas A&M's assistant vice president for business development, said the university's “former students and fans will be among the first in the nation to have access to this innovative way to support Texas A&M's athletic department while also helping fund critical university programs such as the Bonfire Memorial and scholarships for the Corps of Cadets.”